Liaden: OK, I get it. You’ve reached your limit for now. I’m still here, whenever you want to reach out x
Twenty-eight ceiling tiles. Five scuff marks on the wall opposite me. Two loose threads on the top of the armchair in the corner, where Mom and Dad have taken it in turns sitting with me for…how long now? Sometimes it feels like I came in yesterday, other times it feels like nearly a decade.
I can’t get used to not being able to speak. The number of times I open my mouth and try, because I forgot for a moment, is truly depressing. I don’t feel up to learning sign language just yet, and the small whiteboard and pen is getting on my last nerve, so mostly I just lie here in silence. The drugs they’ve given me have dialed down the nightmares, and they’ve given me something to keep me calm, but Callie fills my every waking thought.
Where did you go, my angel? Why did everything change into this nasty hell at the snap of fate’s fingers?
One of the nurses keeps telling me how lucky I am to have survived. I wish she’d go away. I wish they’d keep her the fuck away from me.
Something’s different about today, though. Neroli has been kept away from me up until now. She’s only twelve, and this is a lot for a child to see and deal with. But she’s been begging to see me, even throwing the first tantrum since she was a two year old and demanding to be brought to the hospital, and finally it seems I look in a fit enough state not to frighten her. Or not too much, anyway.
I’m trying to summon up the feeling for her, to get excited to see my little sister - especially when I may have died in that classroom - but there’s nothing nice left in me. I’ll try to fake it as best I can, because it’s not her fault I’m dead inside and I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for anything, but I kind of wish it was happening another day.
Mom is nervous while Dad picks Neroli up from Eli’s; she’s been staying with them while our parents keep watching overme. I think she’s picked up on how I’m feeling. She’s pulling my bedding straight, stroking my hair back from my forehead, saying soothing things and trying to raise my spirits ready for them to arrive. And, I think, to give her something to do while we wait.
“She’s been so looking forward to seeing you, sweetheart,” she says to me softly. Comfort? Fair warning? I try to use my eyes to express to her that I get it, and I won’t have one of my meltdowns where I throw things across the room. My whiteboard, the fucking bedpan, anything I can grab. But I’m going to keep a tight lid on everything. Neroli is still innocent and unknowing, and I want her to stay that way, if I can help it. What little control I have over my life will be spent protecting her.
There’s the sound of my father’s voice talking quietly in the corridor, getting louder as they get closer…and then there they are. Dad has his arm around her shoulder, holding her tightly as she takes the room in with huge eyes.
Poor kid looks terrified.
Her gaze falls on me, and her mouth tightens as her eyes fill. I can see the effort she’s making to swallow it all down and be brave for me, and for the first time sincethatnight, my heart squeezes with something other than misery.
Kiddo.
The baby who turned up as if by magic when I was six. The five year old with skinned knees and my old sneakers, running after me in the sunshine. I taught her to swim. We used to spend Saturday mornings watching SpongeBob together, giggling and doing impressions of Squidward at each other.
Ihavemissed her.
“Dean,” she says in a watery voice, before clearing her throat. She pulls on her Powerpuff Girls t-shirt, the way shealways does when she’s nervous. She ruins a top by stretching it out of shape every time she has a test at school.
I will not allow her to go to Nolan High when the time comes. Over my dead body is she setting foot in that place, whatever’s left of itorwhatever they manage to rebuild.
Our parents watch us anxiously, and when my sister moves towards my bed, Mom takes an unconscious step forwards. She may not admit it, or even realize it, but she knows what’s up. She knows that her son, the one she raised, is gone, and has been replaced with a dark pit of misery that she needs to protect her daughter from falling into.
Neroli fidgets with the edge of my blanket, looking like she has loads to say and no idea how to say any of it. And then there’s me, her big brother, her protector since she was born, with nothing to say and no way of saying it anyway.
And then, out of nowhere, I know exactly what to do.
I boop her nose.
It’s our thing. I’ve done it every morning at breakfast time since she was born, and over the years she’s gone from insisting on it before she’ll eat, to play-fighting and batting my hand away, to rolling her eyes…
And now to smiling and crying with relief, just like our mother, because this thing in the bed in front of her still has some traces of her big brother inside it.
And though I don’t mean it, I summon up the first smile since I lost my voice.
For my sister.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dean
Well, that was awkward as shit.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t see me, though, thank god; I could never have looked either of them in the eye again if they had. Another reason to feel grateful to Leo for installing soft close mechanisms on all the doors for my comfort, because slamming doors sometimes trigger an episode.
All I’d wanted to do was stop by the parlor to pick up a fresh sketch pad for the inevitable insomnia-fest after Eli’s bachelor party tonight. It’s Sunday, and I knew Eli had an appointment earlier this afternoon, but it’s six p.m. He and Em should have both been long gone by now.
